by Hu Liang
     trs. by Sophia kidd

long finger-nailed fairies here   not yet spied upon   red tailed
water robins in droves   turtle doves and black tails
so many waxfinches   picked from the pile of agate
yellow, black, and grey-brown seedlings

by Hei Feng
     trs. by Wang Ping

Your steps wake up the stairs
You shake up my room of depression
You
I know it’s you, Son

You’re a shaft of light
A chirping sparrow
You’re a shy bud
A cloud dropping out of the blue sky

You turn a small gold key
And unlock your daddy’s security door
Oh, it’s you   I turn my head
Gazing
— from head to toe
Everyday I look at you, in surprise
As if I’ve never met you
I gaze at you
From section to section
Look at you as a whole

What?  You got hurt today?  And tears?
They didn’t let you play with them?
Unless you pay them?

— Son   it’s not your fault
That you can’t get along
They’re strong and arrogant, right?
They’re always like that   in the adult world too
It’s the same   come here son
Daddy will play with you   let’s play
A triangle game, a jumping game, chess,
A marine warfare game . . .

What?  No?  Still want to play with them?

All right, wipe your eyes
Go and try again
Daddy will wait at home

by Han Qing
     trs. by Wang Ping

The hand, covered with scars, strokes
The keys and the city.  Its skeleton
Feels smooth, wherever the hand touches
The signals in taxi are overwhelming
The night is a screaming tomcat

Everything about the Six Dynasties are here
Mixing things from last year and a thousand years ago
Hard to tell the difference.  Sometimes
It’s better to be cut off from the world

The darkness in the drawer also belongs to us
The celibate boxer howls like a she-beast
What’s the difference between throwing away
A teddy bear and a baby?  Cheap happiness
Like sand, grinds us into tools
The spring hand is tearing me into willow leaves
The phone’s screen becomes my lake

When I was young
I almost drowned in a pond
Unfortunately, my neighbor pulled me out
To some, the most fun thing to do
Is to take down the ladder into the pool

Yet I love the midnight ringing in my ears
It reminds me I’m still alive:
I also love silence
Only in silence can I hear
The tinnitus of spring

by Akuwuwu
     trs. by Wang Ping

1
Spinning silk marks the meaning for a spider’s existence.  How much silk does a spider spin throughout its life?  Its webs have so many patterns and shapes.  They are the mirror image of the cosmos, also the inner design of life.  I heard spider’s silk comes from its saliva, mapping its life journey, with bones, blood, meridians.  To me, spiders are more like a spider language, writing “Spider Bibles” with their spiderwebs all over the world.

2
Rain and frogs are singing in sync.  In dreams a pair of wings take me away from home.  We encounter the spider king on our way. It opens its eight black legs, controlling my journey from eight directions.  The spider is my destined companion and enemy, but life is meant to transform your enemy to your friend.  I need both to be alive, the mythical small frog’s wisdom, and the power of spider king in my dream.  Spirits appear in the rainy night, my body is abandoned again.

3
The spider carries its own heavy eggs, spitting soft silk continuously, as it travels to the mythical spider kingdom.  It is said only spiders born in the spider kingdom are qualified to become a king.  But it met with death on the road, and the spiders lost the abdomen, only head resurrected for wisdom, and tail for silk and reproduction.  Through such death and resurrection, the spider became spirit, and was worshiped as such by our ancestors.

4
Last night I was tied up by the spider king.  I couldn’t move, speak, or hear the music outside, which was killing me.  But the spider king wouldn’t let me die so easily.  It wouldn’t carry the unescapable crimes on its own back, because there’s a life inside, larger than me.  I’m just an organ for this powerful life.  I’m not its heart, or the treasured head.  I want to be an artery, flowing in sync with music through the spider web.

5
Big snow in winter.  The spider king rolls the snowball towards spring.  Every life seems to live in circles, egg, stars, snowballs, womb, breast, bread, head, gun muzzle, tomb.  The spider king knows life and death of this world.  It knows its circular rhythm, making circular dreams.  The spider king dreams of opening its wings, rolling its eggs and human world into the cosmos.